The medical diagnostics industry is a critical element of today's healthcare infrastructure. At present, however, diagnostic analyses no matter how routine have become a bottleneck in patient care. There are several reasons for this. First, many diagnostic analyses can only be done with highly specialist equipment that is both expensive and only operable by trained clinicians. Such equipment is found in only a few locations—often just one in any given urban area. This means that most hospitals are required to send out samples for analyses to these locations, thereby incurring shipping costs and transportation delays, and possibly even sample loss or mishandling. Second, the equipment in question is typically not available ‘on-demand’ but instead runs in batches, thereby delaying the processing time for many samples because they must wait for a machine to fill up before they can be run.
Understanding that sample flow breaks down into several key steps, it would be desirable to consider ways to automate as many of these as possible. For example, a biological sample, once extracted from a patient, must be put in a form suitable for a processing regime that typically involves using PCR to amplify a vector of interest. Once amplified, the presence of a nucleotide of interest from the sample needs to be determined unambiguously. Preparing samples for PCR is currently a time-consuming and labor intensive step, though not one requiring specialist skills, and could usefully be automated. By contrast, steps such as PCR and nucleotide detection have customarily only been within the compass of specially trained individuals having access to specialist equipment.
Sample preparation is labor intensive in part because of the number of reagents required, and the need for multiple liquid transfer (e.g., pipetting) operations. Furthermore, the reagents required are of sufficient variety that they typically require different handling from one another and are available from different vendors. Even where reagents can be collected together in a single holder and made ready for use, such as described in copending application Ser. No. 12/218,416, filed by ExpressMail on Jul. 14, 2008 (and entitled “Reagent Tube, Reagent Holder, and Kits Containing Same”, in the name of Wilson, et al.) and incorporated herein by reference, it would be beneficial to be able to set up a number of holders for use in batches, and to make them available to liquid dispensing tools that can operate on holders in parallel.
The discussion of the background herein is included to explain the context of the inventions described herein. This is not to be taken as an admission that any of the material referred to was published, known, or part of the common general knowledge as at the priority date of any of the claims.
Throughout the description and claims of the specification the word “comprise” and variations thereof, such as “comprising” and “comprises”, is not intended to exclude other additives, components, integers or steps.